The Seattle rain, although practically constant, was still an object of fascination and relaxation to Annette.
Letting her work and her thoughts go by the wayside, she gazed out her window, trying to watch each drop as it hit the concrete below, her attention only refocused by an occasional passerby, and her eyes would follow them until they walked out of her line of sight.
The calming patter of the precipitation was slowly lulling her to sleep, and she finally pulled her head from her hands with a great deal of effort.
She glanced over at her desk, and remembered she had a lot of work to do.
It had been nearly two months since she left Sacramento to go to graduate school at the University of Washington. Many people objected to her leaving, and sometimes she herself objected, even after the move.
This was one of those times.
She had a paper to do, and right now, she didn't feel like doing anything, but she managed to take pen in hand and start writing.
One word: "The" was written before her attention was drawn away by the little blue wooden cat sleeping on her desk.
"Wish I could sleep all day like you." she said. The cat had been a present from Alex before he had left, a kind of thank you for putting up with him. The thought brought a smile to her face, and she began to mentally reminisce about Sacramento, Dusty, Lisa, and Alex.
After about a minute she realized she was drifting once again, and groaned at the almost blank piece of paper in front of her. There was no way she was going to get the paper done in her current state of mind, so she grabbed her coat and umbrella and headed out the door.
The rain had worn down to a few sprinkles by the time she got back, yet the cold and the clouds retained their iron grip on the landscape.
Managing to kick the door shut, she set her bag of groceries on the table and shook out her umbrella, hoping not to get anything valuable wet. She carefully leaned it against her desk and moved to take the contents from the bag, first removing a small plant.
Actually, it was a piece of fresh catnip she had "borrowed" from a garden en route to the store, thinking it would be kind of funny to put it near the blue cat. She did so, smiled at the scene, then finished unpacking the groceries.
As she shut the refrigerator door, she grabbed her cup of mocha and headed back to her desk to hopefully start and finish that dreadful paper. Setting the cup down, and grabbing a pen, she briefly glanced at the cat.
It was gone.
A look of puzzlement washed over her face as she searched her desk. The wooden feline had disappeared. A faint noise drew her attention to the floor beside her, where the cat was yawning and stretching out, seemingly ignoring the confines of its normal sleeping form.
She stood and backed up as the cat tried to lick its paws. Realizing it couldn't, due to lack of a tongue, it looked up at Annette.
They remained deadlocked like that for quite some time, but the short attention span of the feline caused it to lose the staring match, and it began attacking a spot of light on the floor.
With the convenient distraction, Annette got a hold of the phone.
"Hello?"
"Hi, uh...my cat is alive..."
"What?!" Dusty's voice replied.
Annette turned to see the cat scamper in to the kitchen. "That blue cat Alex gave me is alive!"
"Oh no... please tell me you're kidding..."
"I'm quite serious."
"Great. Has it voiced its intentions to take over Seattle?"
"Luckily, no. It's behaving like a normal cat would. Aside from the fact it can't clean itself."
"Can't clean itself?"
"It doesn't have a tongue."
"Well, that certainly is a problem." Dusty's sarcasm was quite apparent. "Any sightings of the green marble?"
Annette sat back down. "No, that's not what caused it...I put some catnip in front of it that I found. Then it was stretching out on the floor a few minutes later."
"That's good news." He paused. "I say if it isn't going to kill you, you have a nice new pet. You aren't allergic to wooden cats are you?"
The cat ran back in front of her, glanced around crazily, and tore into the other room. "I can't have a wooden cat running around my apartment, just like you couldn't have a drunken bird lounging in yours!"
"All right, all right, I was just kidding. You say catnip started it up?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, what do cats hate?"
"Dogs."
"True, but you're going to have a hard time finding a live wooden dog. I was thinking more along the lines of a bath. I've heard cats hate water."
The feline skittered back into the kitchen. "Are you saying that all I have to do is dunk this thing?"
"Sounds like a plan to me."
She sighed. It might be some work just catching the hyperactive cat. "All right, I'll try it and call you right back."
"Good luck."
"Bye." She hung up the phone and walked into the kitchen as the cat raced between her legs back into the other room. "Here kitty kitty kitty!" She called after it.
It stopped in its tracks and turned to face her.
"Wow, that actually worked..." She commented, and scooped up the cat.
It was purring, obviously pleased with being awake for once. Seeing this, Annette began to feel guilty about ceasing its life. She scratched its belly and released it, vowing to dunk it at the end of the day.
The cat ran off into the other room.
She called Dusty to tell him of her decision, and he wasn't too pleased with the idea, but since the cat wasn't murderous or psychotic, he relented. After the brief conversation, she sat back at her desk, picked up her pen, and started on her paper.
A few hours later, she put down her pen, stretched out in her chair, then stood and yawned. The paper was done, and now she could goof off the rest of the day. The rain had picked up again she discovered as she glanced out the window, so the goofing off had to occur indoors.
She hadn't heard a peep out of the cat, and she found it staring at a corner for no apparent reason. On her approach it turned and looked at her for a moment, then went back to watching the wall.
Just as she turned to leave, the feline was spooked by something, and ran from the room spitting and hissing. She tried to see what had scared the cat so, but couldn't find anything particularly terrifying.
Annette wondered if real cats acted this strange.
She followed her wooden pet, and caught it tearing apart her newly finished paper. Screaming "No!" she lunged at it, and managed to snag its back leg as it tried to bolt for the kitchen.
Gathering it up and gripping it tightly, she assessed the damage to her paper, and realized it was irreparable. She glanced hatefully at the cat, who was struggling mightily to free itself from her arms.
She walked hastily into the kitchen, turned on the faucet, and tried to reassure the feline that she wasn't going to hurt it, although she really would have liked to.
The sink filled up, but before she could put the cat in, it freed itself from her grip and clambered across the floor.
"Come back here!" She yelled after it, but to no avail, the cat was long gone. Sighing, she ran after it, and it jumped onto her bed, whirled and stood, back arched, hissing.
"It's all right," She said. "It's all right. You need a bath."
The cat backed up, then leapt through the window to the ground below. Annette hoped the shattered glass didn't hit anyone below, and she rushed to the window to see what had happened.
It was pouring outside, the gutters working overtime to disperse the runoff, and that's where the cat was lying, motionless.
She sighed in relief that no one had seen the event, and decided to go down and retrieve it before anyone found it.
Upon arrival, Annette discovered that her cat was back to its normal position, and she bent to pick it up with her free hand. It was sopping wet, the small white and red dots on its back faded and running.
She frowned. Alex's gift had been ruined.
Nevertheless, she stuck it in the pocket of her raincoat, moved her umbrella to her other hand, and walked back around to the front.
The rain began to taper off again, and a faint rainbow made itself known to Annette.
The spectrum of colors distracted her from a bird flying swiftly south overhead.
A mockingbird.